I Think that my favorite topic from the middle ages was learning about popes and kings and how they fought for power. What i thought was interesting was that during this time the pope was more powerful than the king. It was this way because the people thought that the pope could either make sure that they go into heaven or don't. So the poeple thought he was more inportant. 
My favorite story was when the king thought that the pope shuldn't pick the bishop so he picked his own. 
When the pope heard this he excommunacated him from the church. THis was not good. The king rode to the pope and then neeled in the snow for three days

      The Black Death was a very bad disease that killed millions in the middle ages. The black death originally came from Asia. Traders brought infected rats with them to other parts of the world. The infected rats carried fleas that then bit people and then they go sick. 
     Most people who had this infection got little swellings on their skin. Sadly most fo the people died within a week. The doctors of this time didn't have enough knowlage to figure how to cure and stop the black death from spreading . They tried simple remedies lime herbs, but nothing helped. One of the most simple things that would have helped is hygiene like washing your hands. But they didn't know this so about one to two thirds of the population died off. 

My name is Elisabeth I am 13 and the youngest child in my family and my father is the king. His kingdom isn't the greatest ,but it isn't falling apart before our eyes.The thing is my father wants me to marry William. He wants me to marry because it would make our alliance with William's family stronger and it would help our kingdom. But I have never met this person before in my life and they live so far away. my father wants me to be happy, so he gave me a couple of days to make my decision  
     I thought about what I was going to do. I want my father to be happy and for his kingdom to be strong. William and his family live a weeks walk away from my home ,so I will never see my family ever again. I will most likely have  a child within a year. But i still want my family to be strong and happy so I will go and marry William and write back home often. 

     Today is a nice day. I stayed in the warm sun and worked in my humble garden and harvested my plants. When the work was done I started walking over the hill to get home. When I reached the top of the hill the most dreadful thing had happened. Smoke ingulfed my whole village. Every building was on fire. In the distance, I saw the most massive ship sailing down the river. In an instance, I knew that our little village had been attacked by the Vikings.
     I immediatly drop my crops, tears began to fill my eyes. the only thing that I could think about was my family back at home. I rushed down the hill and pulled my shirt over my mouth and nose. Breathing got more and more difficult. I started to cough the smoke was chocking me. I started to feel woozy. But I knew that I had to keep going. My house was right on the bank of the river, and my wife and kids were at home. I knew that I had to keep going. I looked to my right I saw  houses falling and to the left I saw dead bodies laying on the ground. The sight made me nauseous. When I got to my house I saw that the roof was on fire. I kicked the door down and saw my family inside . They were alive but badly burned. I got them out as soon as possible. Our only hope was to cross the river and wait and see what would happen next.

      Charles the  Great or Charlemagne was a really great king in the medieval times. One of the things that Charlemagne did was that he took over a lot of Gaul and then ruled it . He was such a great ruler that Pope Leo the Third crowned him. This is a big deal because ,most kings and popes fight for power. 
      Charlemagne encouraged learning. He surrounded himself with scholars from all over the world. He had English, German, Italian and Spanish scholars. He opened a palace school at his capital of Aachen. Charlemagne ruled much of Eastern Europe. His empire grew a lot during his rule. But, his empire fell after many weak rulers that fallowed after him. I think that it must have been hard to rule in such hard times.

Happy New Years!! I know that many people have New Years resolution. even though many people make new years resolutions not many of them keep it for more than a week. Which sometimes it can be hard to keep them. I actually made two. I think that I can keep mine. My first one is to get good grades this year and my other one is to be nicer to people. 
For my first one(getting good grades) all I really have to do is make sure that I complete all of my homework and be at school and put the time in to do everything the right way. Here at Computech we have a really good system in place so that it becomes really hard, (unless you don't care enough) to fail in anything. We have homework lab so you can get help with your homework or if you need to make up some work. We also have the lunch study club for everyone who has a D or a F in any of their classes. My other resolution is to be  nicer to people. that one is gong to be more difficult for me and I bet it would be that way for anyone. I  think that if I think before I talk or act and to put myself into someone else's shoes, before i do anything i wish I hadn't. Hopefully I can keep this up through out the year.  

     I am so excited for Winter vacation. But I still have to go to school for two more days. right now they can't be going any slower. Today we have the winter dance so we don't have to wear uniforms, which is nice. Tomorrow in French class we are having a French dessert tasting. That should be a lot of fun. also in Core we are watching Mulan, since we just finished learning about Japan. 
     Over Winter Vacation I hope to do a lot. First off we have Christmas.I love to get presents ,but I love giving them even more.  The day after Christmas I plan on going to my friends cabin with her and her family up in Shaver. We should have a lot of fun. When I get back, I will go up to my Grandparents house out of town. There we will celebrate my birthday and sadly go to my great-grandfathers funeral. Even though we have to to go to his funeral, we will have a lot of fun. I can't wait for school to be over!

      When Japan first started out many countries had already succussed in a lot of things. Like China and Korea. in the beginning, all that Japan had to call their own was art and a spoken language. They really needed a written language. So the used one very similar to China's. The chinese didn't mind at all 
     The Japanese still spoke their own language, but they use China's language. The Japanese wrote a lot. Most people wrote beautiful poems. People of the court would even throw parties in which they took turns writing and reading each others poems. Back then most of their poems were five lines long and usually were about nature.  But not all of them wrote poetry. One of the first recorded novels called The Tale of Genji was written by a Japanese woman who wrote about life in the court. 

My name is Joe, I live in China, I am a poor farmer. In this afternoon in the year 1212,  I like to pull weeds out of my fields. The other day I was quietly working on improving my crops when I heard a something that sounded like thunder. I looked up into the sky but it was crystal clear. I turn around ,and I see were the sound is coming from. In the distance I can see the  dreaded Mongols heading right toward us, and I see then banging on their huge drums. 
     I am paralyze with fear. The first thing that I thought of was my family. I went into the village and grabbed my family and we ran as fast and as far as we could. We found a small cave about a mile away from the village. We are shacking with fear. Everyone knows that the Mongols kill everything in sight. They kill all girl,boy, man, woman even dogs. We wait for hours and hours. We can hear the screams of others My family and I start getting hungry, but none of us dare go out side. We stay there for about a day,and until we don't hear anything else. We have survived an attack from the Mongols. We can see the mess they made dead bodies everywhere. We pack up whats left of our stuff and leave t move to the next town.      

     The Chinese have created many great things. Some of those things we still use today. I think that the best one has been the magnetic compass. Thy were the first to use compasses at sea to help them get to their destination. 
     The compass was used in China hundreds of years before the Europeans. They have created a device that is still used today. Now days you can buy them almost anywhere. I think that the Chinese compass was an inspiration for the modern day G.P.S. Now G.P.S's are use in phones and are the easiest way to find your destination in the car. The Chinese has also created things like the arabacus which was a device that made it easy to add, subtract, and multiply anything in seconds.